


Wrong Doctor

by morning_fangirl



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alien Planet, Dimension-Hopping Rose, Facing the past, Gen, Mention of former companions, Pre-Episode: s04e13 Journey's End, Season/Series 11, Tenth Doctor refrenced
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-04
Updated: 2020-02-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:08:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22552258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morning_fangirl/pseuds/morning_fangirl
Summary: "And in forty years time, fifty, there'll be this woman, this strange woman, walking through the marketplace on some planet a billion miles from Earth. But she's not Rose Tyler. Not anymore. She's not even human."-Jackie Tyler (Army of Ghosts:series 2 episode 12).So, maybe it hasn't been forty, fifty years, but Yaz finds a strange woman walking through a marketplace billion of miles from Earth. And she may just be Rose Tyler.
Relationships: The Doctor (Doctor Who)/Rose Tyler
Kudos: 54





	Wrong Doctor

**Author's Note:**

> Basically leaning into the theme of the Doctor being forced to confront her past.  
> (Written before series 12)

It was a typical day traveling throughout the universe with the Doctor. The Doctor and her companions were on some distant planet and for a change were not running. Well, at least not yet anyways. Everything almost seemed eerily normal.  
The Doctor was messing around with the TARDIS trying to fix something or another. Meanwhile, she had set her companions loose onto an intergalactic marketplace.

Yaz had walked off and was standing right outside of an alleyway when she saw a blast of light. When the light faded, she saw a young woman in her late teens or early twenties with blonde hair wearing a purple jacket.

“Blimey, this blasted thing isn’t supposed to land me in front of people,” the girl said with a bit of a whine and a London accent.  
“Where did you come from?” Yaz asked.  
Ignoring the question, the blonde gave her a once over. “Your clothes look like there from earth 21st century after 2012 if I’m right.”  
Taking a page out of the girl’s book, Yaz in turn looked at her clothes. “Well you look like you’re from earth couple years after the turn of the 21st century.”  
“Who are you traveling with? How did someone from 21st century earth get out here, huh?”  
“A friend,” Yaz replied. There was something about the girl that seemed trustworthy.  
“This friend wouldn’t happen to go by the Doctor, would they?” The girl asked a hint of a smile appearing on her face. Yaz nodded.  
“Would you mind taking me to ‘im? You see I’m an old friend. Name’s Rose Tyler. I just crossed an entire universe to see ‘im, so it’d be great if you could take me to ‘im.”  
Yaz nodded again and the two girls started walking back to the TARDIS.

“Oh blimey! I have no idea which him this is. This could be him from before he met me. Oh, silly Rose.” The blonde girl said. Yaz just watched as the girl seemed to be reasoning with herself.  
“No no no, wait. You’re from after me on earth. This Doctor will at least know me. Sorry all this dimension jumping is messing with me. I don’t have my canon set to any particular Doctor just one of them. So, this thing,” Rose held up her wrist for Yaz to see, “just plops me back in this universe somewhere along his timestream in his proximity.”

They walk in silence for a few feet before Yaz asked, “Why do you keep saying him?”  
“What d’ya mean? I mean I know he’s alien, but he is a guy. The last Time Lord, isn’t that who you’re traveling with?”  
“My Doctor’s a woman. Never mentioned anything ‘bout being the last of her kind.”

By this time, Yaz and Rose were feet away from the TARDIS. Rose took a step and turned so she was facing Yaz face on blocking the TARDIS. She looked at the other girl who wasn’t any older than her. Almost a minute passed before Rose turned to look at the TARDIS. Slowly, the blonde walked towards the TARDIS with obvious hesitation in each step.  
The girl then pulled a chain off from around her neck with a key surprising Yaz. Only the Doctor had a key. How did this Rose have one? The blonde took a deep breath and put the key in the lock.

The door instantly clicked opened causing the Doctor to spin around. She had been messing around with the consol, there was always something broken with it, when she heard the click.  
She hadn’t heard that sound from the inside since… well for a very long time. She really tried to do what she always had done, suppress the memories. She could never forget them, didn’t want to in the slightest. So many lives, so many loves and losses, regrets. So, she didn’t talk about them, no matter how much she missed them all. Instead she saw them in her dreams or in the rare moments she let herself.

The last time someone other than herself had used a key was Clara. Oh Clara Oswald. Her impossible girl, who wasn’t really impossible at all. But Clara didn’t even use a key often, she would just snap her fingers to open the doors. Like River said the Doctor would be able to do one day back in the library at there first/last meeting. Back then, she hadn’t believed Professor Song, who could open the TARDIS with a snap? Low and behold, her Impossible Girl had been able to do just that as well.  
Her Ponds had a key too. Amelia Pond, a fairy tale name. And then there was Martha and Donna. Then there was her pink and yellow Bad Wolf. Those three girls had all had keys and had to put up with her rude and not ginger self. She also had given the immortal Captain a key; still no idea what she had been thinking with that.

No more than five seconds have passed since the lock clicked. When the Doctor brought herself back into the moment, the door was wide open. The Doctor could not believe who was on the other side of the doorway.  
There was her pink and yellow girl who she hadn’t seen in forever. Not since one of the best and worst days of her life simultaneously. The day of the twenty-seven planets where all her companions since the Time War were together on the TARDIS. Sarah Jane and Martha and Donna and Mickey and Jackie and Jack and Rose. All of them together. Then, she left Rose with the Metacrisis in the parallel world and had to wipe Donna’s memory.  
Nonetheless, here was Rose looking even younger than that last day. That’s when it hit the Doctor.  
“You're still trying to find me,” the Doctor breaths.  
Rose stepped inside the TARDIS. “So, I find you then. The right you. The you with really really great hair and that smile. The you that said goodbye on the beach.” She didn’t ask. No Rose Tyler stated what was going to happen.  
The Doctor nodded. “You know this is my fourth face since the one I was wearing when you met me.”  
“Is it?” Rose said with a shadow of a smile. “Um… how long had it been since you’ve seen me, Doctor?”  
“Too long. You don’t want to know the exact number of years. For all I know I could have loss track somewhere in there. I’ll just say the time since I’ve seen you is much longer than how old I was when we met.”  
“You haven’t been alone too much of the time, have you? I see you’re traveling with someone now.”  
“Three someones actually. Let’s see. Before you come back, I’ll have traveled with Martha and Donna. You’ll meet both of ‘em. I was always moping about you when I traveled with Martha, she may hate you just a little. Then there was my Ponds. And River, although she came in and out. Most of her adventures were when I broke her out of jail. Then there was Clara. She stayed with me through a regeneration like you, you know. And lastly Bill and Naldo.”  
“Good. You haven’t been alone. You don’t do well alone.” Rose smiled softly at the same old Doctor no matter what face he, or she, she guessed, wore.

Rose Tyler looked at the Doctor like she hung the stars... and in a way that was what the Doctor did for every companion who stepped through those doors. The Doctor tried to memorize her pink and yellow girl to memory; she may have TARDIS interfaces and pictures, but this is the last time the Doctor will lay eyes on the girl who rescued her after the Time War. Rose looks around taking in the new TARDIS interior one last time.  
“I guess I better get back to hopping. It definitely is a relief that this will all be worth it in the end.”  
“Goodbye Rose Tyler.”  
“Goodbye Doctor. Don’t go forgetting me, please.”  
“I could never forget you. Now run you clever girl and I will always remember.” the Doctor told the girl who saved him after the Time War. Paraphrasing her Clara’s words.  
With that, Rose pressed a button and a blinding light appeared. The light faded and then it was just the Doctor.  
“Who was that?” Yaz staged whispered.  
The Doctor looked up at one of her current companions. “Just an old friend.”  
The answer was put in such a way that Yaz didn’t push. It had only been a couple of months, but Yaz was realizing just how little she knew about the Doctor,  
especially the past.


End file.
